Graspop Metal Meeting, the four-day metal festival in Dessel, Belgium, got off to a somber start on Thursday: a 47-year-old man who had fallen ill at the festival’s campground died in the hospital on Thursday morning.
The performance of Erling Haaland, the striker for the Norwegian national team, at the World Cup in the U.S. has sent shockwaves through his home country.
In Schorndorf, a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, near Stuttgart, a 2-year-old child died after being left in a car by her mother.
A bus carrying a youth soccer team from Belarus was attacked by a drone on Wednesday in the Russian region of Bryansk, which borders both Ukraine and Belarus. Russia is calling it a “Ukrainian drone attack,” but Kyiv strongly denies this.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk suspects that the murder of Russian cartoonist and Kremlin critic Semyon Skrepetsky was politically motivated. “Everything points to a political assasination, but we’ll have to wait and see if concrete evidence is found,” he said.
In 2025, Russia granted more than a thousand special visas to foreigners who say they identify with what Moscow calls “traditional values,” according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. The visa, often referred to in Western media as the “anti-woke visa,” is part of a broader Kremlin strategy to attract ideological allies.
The United States and Iran reached a preliminary agreement on Sunday evening aimed at ending their conflict. The breakthrough was first reported by the Pakistani prime minister and later confirmed by both Tehran and U.S. President Donald Trump. Many details remain unclear, but the outlines of the agreement are beginning to take shape.
A high-profile criminal wanted by Belgian authorities for large-scale cocaine smuggling through the port of Antwerp has been killed in downtown Barcelona, according to Spanish media reports. The killing took place in broad daylight. The killer was not wearing a mask and paid no attention to security cameras or passersby on the street.
The G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, has entered its second day. In a statement released after the first day, the G7 leaders pledged to continue providing military support to Ukraine and to increase pressure on Russia.
Temperatures are set to soar in the coming days, and recent figures released by the United Nations last week demonstrate that heat waves can have serious consequences.